Fractured from the Fall

Richard

THE PRESENT

Lily knew the story of the beautiful blonde's suicide well. It was a bit of a legend in her neighborhood. The upscale community of Crystal Cove did not often see tragedy like that. In fact, at the time, it even made the local paper. Lily thought about the incident as she stood on the same cliff, toes to the edge, looking down at the long fall below. She wondered what the woman's last thoughts might have been before she leapt to her death. Perhaps she thought back on her life and the choices she made. Or perhaps her last thought was that of her husband and children. No one knew of course. There was no suicide note left behind. But for the first time in her life, Lily felt that she could relate to this awful event. She could actually see why someone would possibly give up all hope and decide to end it all. Her own story was far from a fairy tale. She had recently discovered that her husband, Richard, had been cheating on her with his administrative assistant. She felt like such a cliché; the rich plastic surgeon's wife who gets left for a younger version of herself. Not that she was old by normal standards, but 33 was practically ancient in Orange County.

If she was being honest with herself, she wasn't surprised that Richard cheated. She had thought about cheating herself many times. Their marriage was not a happy one, to say the least. Richard spent most of his time feeling the breasts of women in their early twenties while she spent most of her time spending the money he made off of feeling said breasts.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the salty sea air. The wind whipped tiny strands of her dirty blonde hair across her face. She wasn't exactly sure why she had come to this spot where the tragedy had happened all those years ago. It was a place that she thought about visiting often, but never really had the courage to. As she peered out over the cliff, she wondered if she had the strength to jump or if her natural instinct to survive would kick in and pull her back from the edge.

Luckily she didn't have to find out. Her cell phone buzzed alerting her of a voicemail. She hadn't even heard it ring, which wasn't unusual. Cell reception along the coast was terrible, or at least that's what her husband had told her one night when she had inquired as to why he hadn't picked up her numerous phone calls. Had he been cruising the PCH with his mistress, or had he been in his mistress's bed at her apartment and just needed an excuse? It mattered little now.

She hit the playback button and listened to the message. At first it was hard to make out through the sobbing but eventually she recognized the voice on the other end of the line. It was her twelve-year old niece, Harper, and the news she had was bad. Her father, Lily's brother-in-law, was dead. Lily's hand dropped and hung limply at her side. The news wasn't shocking. She knew the call was coming, she just didn't know when. Her brother-in-law had been sick with cancer for quite a while, yet hearing that he was actually dead shook Lily to her core. She stood in disbelief staring out at the vast ocean watching the waves crash against the rocks and then recede down the beach. Her sister's picture perfect marriage, that she had always envied, was over. Violet was a widow now and Harper, fatherless. For a split second she felt a sick sort of happiness that she wasn't the only person whose life was falling apart. But her morbid delight was quickly followed by a pang of guilt over thinking such a terrible thought.

The phone vibrated in her hand jolting her back to the present. She quickly looked at the caller I.D, expecting it to be her niece. It wasn't. It was her lawyer. Was it coincidence that her phone worked now when he called or was it karma for her insensitive thoughts? He was quickly becoming her least favorite person in the world, second to none to her ex-husband. She had no desire to hear what he had to say almost as much as she had no desire to return her niece's phone call. She wasn't good at comforting people in times of need. That was her sister's job. Violet was the caretaker and she was the adventurer, the dreamer, or the escape artist, as Violet would say. She was great at running away.